D.C. Dogfight Looms Over Stealth Jets

ABOARD A U.S. MILITARY AIRCRAFT — There’s been lighter-than-expected resistance on Capitol Hill to Defense Secretary Robert Gates’ plan to radically overhaul the Pentagon budget. But a face-off may be looming.

The dialogue has been heated, at times. But that hasn’t resulted in many changes to the actual budget. Today, Gates told Danger Room that he’s been “a little bit” surprised by how little the legislators “differe[d] from what we put forward. Based on the mark we’ve already seen from the House and what I’ve heard about the Senate… I think we’ve actually done pretty well. ”

A fight could still be ahead, however. The biggest disagreement so far has come over the F-22 Raptor stealth jet. Gates wants production of the advanced fighter ended, after 187 planes; the House and Senate Armed Services Committee voted to spend another billion or two to build up to 12 extra planes – and add money for an alternative engine to a second stealth jet project. That may sound relatively minor, in a military budget that’s more than $530 billion. But the jet stopped being just a piece of hardware years ago. In military circles, the Raptor is a symbol.

For the Raptor’s backers, the advanced fighter is key to continuing American military dominance over potential competitors like Russia and China. Stopping production “means a loss or erosion of margin in our air superiority,” one former senior military official says. That erosion that invites an aggressive response. “The first nation that determines they can kick our ass is going to kick our ass.”

For the jet’s detractors, the F-22 an overpriced anachronism — a relic of a dogfighting age that’s out of place in the era of the improvised bomb. Allowing the program to continue, even a little longer, represents a return to the bad-old-days of Pentagon spending, when endless billions were poured into platinum-plated projects only marginally relevant to current conflicts.

“Even one is a problem,” says Pentagon press secretary Geoff Morrell. “The number is zero.”

Gates has been talking with Congressional leaders, telling them which parts of his budget plan he’s willing to accept – and which ones he won’t. “I’m not going to detail what that list is,” he said. But the Raptor is clearly in the no-go category. So are some of the more exotic missile defense research projects, like the Airborne Laser, a ray gun-equipped 747. Gates also indicated today that he won’t budge on his reorganization of Future Combat Systems, the Army’s $200 billion effort to field new wireless networks, new sensors, and new families of fighting vehicles. The drones and the bandwidth will be rolled out to the troops. The current vehicle models – no way. The Army has already started early planning on alternatives. If Congress tried to roll back that process, Gates said, that “would be a problem.”